To get your home in shape for your senior years, you can retrofit spaces with things like grab bars and non-slip rugs, or renovate rooms using principles of “universal design” to make spaces accessible to people of different physical abilities, sizes, and ages.

The most important thing you can do to assure yourself high-quality medical care is to form a strong relationship with a good primary care physician and, at times, together make informed decisions on specialty care. We identify top area doctors.

This section summarizes our hospital ratings and describes other information you can gather yourself. The section “Hospital Ratings Data Details,” listed below, provides further discussion of these data and its strengths and weaknesses.

If you are hearing less than you used to, take a measure of comfort in knowing that you’re not alone. About 10 percent of Americans have some hearing loss, and the figure is more than 30 percent for persons over age 65.